Disclamer: I own nothing, everything belongs to their rightful owners.
AN: Clyde Easter & Emily Prentiss/ a little dark and twisty as Always
Pieces
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Prolog
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It's a stormy night in the middle of December. The old mansion still and cold and empty, except for the three year old boy walking down a dimly lit hallway.
"Mommy," he calls, clutching a stuffed animal against his pyjama. His blonde hair is tousled, tears staining his cheeks. The images of his recent nightmare still haunting him. "Mommy," he calls again, before he pushes the door to his parents' bedroom open.
The room is dark, but the light from the hall is enough for the boy to see that the sheets on the bed are neatly folded. Untouched by its owner. "Mummy?" the boy whimpers, fresh tears starting to spill down his cheeks. But there's no answer. Just the creaking of the floorboards under his feet and-
The boy squints his eyes. There's another sound. The sound of dripping water. He steps forward and further into the room, his teddy bear pressed closely against his chest. When he opens the door to the bathroom he is greeted with a loud squeak from the hinges and a bright light. He blinks and when his sight grows clearer, he sees the puddle of water on the floor next to the tub, drops still falling from the rim.
He steps closer, the tiles under his feet freezing. There's a smell of roses and rust coating the air, an odd mixture that makes his nose crinkle in disgust.
"Mommy?" the boy calls out once more while he makes his way over to the tub. He's scared and alone and he just wants his Mommy to sing him back to sleep. He's still thinking about his nightmare. Still thinking about the loud voices, the screaming and yelling. About someone whisperingI love you, darling inside his ear.
The boy has to step on tip toes so he can look inside the tub. His bear hits the floor with a thud when he bends forward, his fingers so tight around the rim it hurts. The boy becomes quiet, the tears frozen on his chubby cheeks. His pale blue eyes growing wide as he looks down at the angel floating in the crimson water.
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Of course it wasn't an angel.
It was his mother, her blonde hair surrounding her head like a halo. Her soaked nightgown imitating wings.
Clyde Easter doesn't remember how long he's been there staring at his dead mother. He doesn't remember who found him, doesn't remember what happened afterwards.
What he remembers is wearing a suit, holding a red rose in his hand. The thorns stinging his fingers. And he remembers his father, staring off into the distance with a grim expression on his face, telling him to quit crying.
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There's a woman, Dorothea. A sweet elderly woman who eats breakfast and lunch and dinner with him. And there's Audrey, a young girl with blonde hair and a heart-warming smile that takes him to the park and plays hide and seek with him.
There's Henry, his driver, taking Audrey and him to church every Sunday. And there are Carol and Thea, their housekeeper and their cook. Paul working the gardens and Winston looking after the horses.
They're all kind and nice and never yell or punish him, but they never sayI love you, darling, either. They're just working for his father after all.
The room at the end of the hall is locked. The number one rule to not even go near that door. Clyde never even dares to try.
He only sees his father for special occasions. Christmas, birthdays or some official events his father needs to pretend to actually be a father to make a good impression. Clyde always tries his best to please his father but deep down knows that no matter what he'll try he never will.
When Clyde turns six, his father tells Audrey to pack a suitcase. They drive for hours, just his father and him. Clyde spots the impressive building from afar, wonders if it's a castle. Wonders if they're going on vacation.
But it's not a castle and they aren't going on vacation. It's a boarding school.
His father tells him it's for the best, but Clyde knows that his father just can't stand the sight of him. That with his blonde hair and his pale blue eyes he looks too much like his dead mother and that his father just wants him as far away from London as possible.
Clyde watches as his father drives away without looking back, feeling utterly alone.
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He's top of his class from day one. He's a smart boy, quiet and polite. Teachers' favorite and he just knows how to get what he wants. Money isn't an issue, never has been and if he wants to have something he just goes and takes it.
By the time he turns fourteen he's the one ruling the school grounds. The one everyone comes to, no matter what they want or need. He's also the one who gets to choose his girl first at every dance the school stages and Clyde makes a habit out of seducing every single one of them. When he turns seventeen he has not only a place at Cambridge for certain, but the reputation of a player.
Sometimes Clyde wonders what his father would say if he knew how alike they were. Wonders if he would finally be proud or if he would be just as ashamed and disgusted as his mother surely would have been. Sometimes Clyde hates himself just as much as his father does.
He only thinks about his mother when he's alone, curled up like a little boy under the sheets watching the shadows against the wall. He still remembers her smile and her soft voice whispering I love you, darlinginto his ear. He remembers that she used to read him stories every night, remembers that she played with him all day long. Just him and her. His father always away on some business trip. Only today Clyde knows that his father hadn't just been away for work.
Sometimes he allows himself to think about the night he found his mother. Questions what really happened. Knows that there were only two options and neither of them much appealing. Either his mother hadn't loved him enough to keep living at his father's side or she hadn't been the one slitting her wrists in the first place.
If Clyde had to choose he would prefer the latter. It is easier to live with the fact that his father was a murderer than to think that not even his own mother loved him.
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Clyde is still top of his class when he enrols in Cambridge. He's eighteen and the access to drugs and alcohol and girls much easier, and maybe because of that, less exciting.
Most nights he spends alone in his car, keeps driving for hours with nowhere to go. He starts thinking about his mother more and more often, starts wondering why his father still lives in that house. If it's guilt or victory that makes him keep his mother's ghost locked up in the room at the end of the hall.
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Clyde is nineteen and back home for Christmas. Once again only because his father needs him to make a good impression at his annual Christmas party. But this time it's worse, this time there's a woman too. A woman with a sparkling diamond on her finger, a ring Clyde knows had been his mothers.
Instead of throwing a tantrum he drinks until his voice gets slurred and his father tells him to get out of his sight. Clyde does, walks up the stairs and down the hallway to the room where his mother has died. Picking the lock much easier than he thought it would be.
When he stumbles inside it's dark and cold, the air stale. Thick layers of dust on the bed and the drawers. The curtains are closed, no light coming through the heavy cotton. The smell of roses and rust overwhelming. When he staggers into the bathroom, he's not prepared for what he finds.
There's a stuffed animal lying in front of the tub, a brown teddy bear, his fur full of dust. The white tiles are stained with dirty smears of brown red as well as the whole tub. A rusted scissor lies at the bottom, strands of blonde hair caught in the drain.
For a second he just stares, but a moment later he's bend over the sink. His hands clutched around the rim, tears streaming from his eyes as he starts to vomit.
When his father finds him, God knows how many hours later, he's sitting on the floor with his back against the tub. His old teddy clutched against his chest. His suit ruined.
"Did you kill her?" Clyde asks. His voice raspy, his throat burning like hell. "Did you kill my mother?"
Instead of an answer, his father slaps him hard across the face.
When Clyde wakes up in his own bed the next day the house is empty. The door to the room at the end of the hall firmly locked as if it's never been opened before. His father is gone and so is the skinny woman with his mother's ring on her finger.
In front of the house in the snowy driveway Clyde finds a Porsche, all new and black and shiny with a card that reads Merry Christmas, son.
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Clyde is twenty one and there are only a couple of months left before graduation. Only a couple of months before he'll join the Royal Marines, ready to fight and die for his country.
He hasn't told his father yet, not because he's afraid to do so, but because he wants to do it at his annual Christmas party. It seems like a great coincidence that this year's party seems to be something special for his father too.
When Clyde arrives in London, his father isn't even there. It's snowing, the house cold and dark and Clyde has to fight the urge to walk right back out. There's Dorothea with a note from his father, saying that he expects Clyde to join him for breakfast the next morning.
Four hours later, he ends up at a party. Mainly because he can't stand the despair lingering in every corner of the house, but also because his college friend Will needs a ride.
He agrees to stay for a beer and a smoke, but before he really knows it it's midnight and when Clyde finally manages to entangle himself from a redhead to leave, he finds his black Porsche buried under a pile of snow. It's snowing, white puffy flakes falling so fast it's dizzying to watch. The streets vanished under a thick blanket of snow and ice and one look is all he needs to know there's no way he'll make it home tonight. With a frustrated groan Clyde turns around to walk back into the house, hoping the redhead hasn't found another guy to entertain her yet. If he was stuck, he could at least enjoy it.
He's halfway up the front steps when he spots the girl leaning with her back against the wall, her short black dress a stark contrast to the faded paint of the brick wall. Her arms and legs are bare despite the freezing cold, her skin so white it almost looks translucent in the dim light from the door. Her black hair is framing her face, falling loosely down her small shoulders. She holds a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other, staring off into the night.
"Aren't you cold, darling?"
When she turns her head, there's a smile tugging at her cherry red lips as if she already knew he was watching.
"Should I?" she asks, looking him up and down with eyes so dark Clyde's sure they're black.
"It's freezing," he says matter-of-factly and knows it's the dumbest thing he could have said.
The girl shrugs, her gaze locked with his. A smug expression on her flawless face, as she keeps looking at him.
"Who are you?" she asks. Crooking her head slightly, her dark eyes glistening.
"I'm Clyde," he tells her, his hands stuffed in his pockets against the burning cold. He steps closer, his eyes never leaving her face. "What's your name?"
She seems familiar and Clyde wonders if he already knows her. Mesmerized, he watches as she wets her lips with her tongue before she bends forward, close and closer, until he can feel them brush against his ear.
"Emily," she breathes. "My name is Emily."
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Disclamer: I own nothing, Everything belongs to their rightful owners.
AN: Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and/or review my stories, that really means the world to me! And a big thank you goes to the wonderful guineapiggie for beta reading!